St Mark's in Venice was the most prestigious place to work at this time The composer Giovanni Gabrieli and his uncle Andrea Gabrieli were, in their time, both organists at St Mark's in Venice. The splendid acoustics of this spacious building were expoited by these composers when they divided up their vocal and instrumental forces to form antiphonal effects. (This had a direct influence on the development of the later concerto principle, where forces are separated, instead of having one body of sound. This started with the concerto grosso and moved to the solo concerto in the late Baroque and Classical eras. This also had major implications for the concept of drama in music, in both vocal and instrumental spheres.)
A new invention, to be known as opera, started in Florence about the year 1600. (For a more indepth look at the beginning of opera see Lecture 1 of The History of Opera.) The first operas were very different from the large-scale spectacles of modern times. They were largely recitative, with some arias and choruses. Although first produced in private homes, the first public opera house opened in Venice in 1637. The first audiences came to prefer the arias, for these were expressive and often showy pieces; people were drawn by a particular performer rather than the plot or even the music iteself. A basso continuo was played throughout the opera by a harpsichord player, often supported by a cello. To save the composer from writing out every note, the harpsichordist would read from a figured bass.
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Monteverdi is regarded as the first great composer of opera. He is accredited as the first composer to use tremolando on the violin as a dramatic effect, and he used a variety of instruments to accompany his operas - not yet the orchestra as we know it today, but certainly the foundation, a mixture of different tone colours, was being laid.
END OF PARAPLUSThe word "Baroque" is borrowed from architecture, where it sugests the elaborate twisting of the sometimes excessively decorated buildings of that time. This was a time of great change in music. By about the end of the seventeenth century the outdated modes had been replaced by our familiar major and minor scales, and harmony, as we know it, had started to develop. The viols became obsolete, and the more versatile violin family took their place. The great violin makers, Stradivarius, Amati and Guarneri flourished at this time.
Music was written to order in those days and composers all worked for a patron. This might be the church, where they were employed to provide all the music for church services; or a wealthy nobleman, where they were paid to entertain him and his guests at important social functions. King Louis XIV of France, for example, employed the composer Lully as his court composer.
There was a distinct move away from the sort of vocal music that Palestrina and Byrd had written in earlier times. Gradually, the melodic interest moved up to the top vocal line, and there was an effort to make the words become more distinct in themselves, and to write music which illustrated their meaning more dramatically.
J S Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau